The astronaut by her side

TUCSON, Ariz. — NASA’s selection Thursday of a backup commander for astronaut Mark Kelly served as a reminder that the shooting in Tucson affected another community nearly as much as Capitol Hill — the one affiliated with America’s manned space programs.

For critically injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and Kelly had become the first couple of space exploration, a unique, high-profile team that took to the national stage as some of the most critical decisions in the history of U.S. human spaceflight were on the agenda.

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The partnership between the lawmaker and the space shuttle commander, who had been scheduled to lead a flight in April, added a glamorous sheen to a venture whose luster had dimmed. But more important, the relationship between the two had significant political and policy implications as the nation undertook its first major debate over manned spaceflight since the end of the Apollo program that sent Americans to the moon.

The marriage between Giffords, a rising political star, and Kelly, a veteran of three space shuttle missions and a decorated Navy combat pilot, took place just months after she was first sworn in as a House member in 2007, and it marked Giffords as the only lawmaker ever to watch a spouse launched into space.

“It gave her an insider’s view of the space program and gave her an opportunity to really know a different side of the space program than any of us ever had an opportunity to know,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), a close friend of Giffords and Kelly, told POLITICO on Tuesday.

By her second term, Giffords had become chairwoman of the Science and Technology Committee’s Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee, a post that made her a serious player in space politics. The subcommittee’s oversight of NASA and national space policy raised conflict-of-interest issues that ended when the ethics committee concluded that because Kelly is paid by the Navy rather than NASA, there wasn't a problem.

Her chairmanship and marriage turned Giffords into one of the most important members of Congress on space policy — and a rare key political player who didn’t have a major NASA facility or significant space-industry interest back home.

“There aren’t that many members of Congress in either the House or Senate side that devote a lot of attention to space issues,” said Jeff Foust, editor of the blog SpacePolitics.com. “With a lot of the other members of Congress who are interested in space, it’s for more parochial reasons.”

Giffords’s positions have put her at odds with President Barack Obama, who ended the expensive Constellation manned space program that aimed to establish a long-term human presence on the moon and eventually send humans to Mars.

She was one of Constellation’s top champions and gave an impassioned defense of the program on the House floor when it was cut from NASA’s budget. And when she disagreed with a witness during a 2009 hearing who was opposed to continuing the program, a colleague took note of her marriage to Kelly in a sharp response.

“I’m not from Texas, California or Florida, and I’m not married to an astronaut, so I can try to be as objective as possible,” said Rep. Vern Ehlers (R-Mich.).

It wasn’t the only time Giffords took heat for her marriage: The couple also ran into some bad press after the Orlando Sentinel reported Kelly once used one of NASA’s training jets to fly to the Indianapolis 500 to meet Giffords at a cost of $9,000 to taxpayers.

For the most part, though, the fairy tale marriage was a political asset for Giffords. Astronauts in NASA flight suits frequently visited her office. As a candidate for Congress, she attended Kelly’s 2006 shuttle launch and ended up winning a local news story because she skipped then-Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean’s visit to Tucson.